In Delibes' first novel, La sombra del ciprés es alargada …, the author introduces several of the same aspects of childhood which he later developed in El camino: close friendship between boys, the boy's initial dislike of a younger girl, the private world of the boys of which the adults are unaware, the child's growing awareness of sex, the child's insight into the weaknesses of the adults, the death of a friend. Delibes' handling of these themes in La sombra … is heavyhanded and lacks the humor and greater realism of the later novels…. Moreover, the characterization of Pedro in La sombra … is disturbing because of his obsession with death. He knows that Alfredo will die long before the other boy falls ill; he then grows into adulthood with the thought of this death constantly in mind. This response to death is not typical of the young. (pp. 473-74)

La sombra is an unsuccessful portrayal of the world of children in another respect. In the first section of the novel, Delibes is trying to convince us that a young boy is telling the story, recounting his own experiences in the first person. But he has the child express himself on a level far beyond his years. In El camino, on the contrary, Delibes has carefully captured the speech and thought of children.

El camino is dominantly presented to us from the child's perspective…. Structurally the novel is intended to be the memories of Daniel during his last sleepless night before being sent off to boarding school. The nature of his memories is episodic: tales of various of the townspeople, adventures with his friends, overheard conversations between his parents, etc. Some of the stories of what went on in the town, particularly before his birth, are stories that Daniel simply could not know. For example, the author allows us to hear a conversation between the Guindilla sisters when the younger sister returned home after running off with a man. This is a conversation that only an omniscient narrator could relay to us. With the exception of a few such episodes, however, Delibes maintains the illusion that we are seeing the town through the eyes of the children. Their appraisal of the various people with whom they come in contact is therefore quite different from the version we would hear from an adult. They admire Roque's father, the strong blacksmith who is not religious and who drinks too much. They play jokes on the serious and upright Guindilla mayor. They are fond of Quino, el Manco, because he lets them touch the stump of his arm and talks to them as if they were grown up.

Delibes' novel is reminiscent of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer in its effort to capture the perspective of the child and in its humor. Both novels focus on the adventures of a trio of boys: Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn and Joe Harper in the American novel and Daniel, Roque and Germán in the Spanish work. There is a noticeable parallel between Roque and Huck, for both have fathers who drink too much and neither is being subjected to the same rigorous formal education that Tom and Daniel are. In both novels, the natural enemy of the boys is the schoolmaster. There are also episodes in the two works that are quite similar in tone. Such is the case of the boys' discussion of scars in El camino and of warts in Tom Sawyer or the episodes in both novels which deal with the mistreatment of cats. Absent from Delibes' novel, in contrast with Tom Sawyer, are the more grotesque notes of murder and villainy. In Daniel's little town, no one is basically bad and no crimes take place. Tragedy does strike when Germán dies as the result of an accident, but this is quite different from the murder that Tom witnesses. On the other hand, Twain and Delibes do coincide in a treatment of first love. (pp. 474-75)

Delibes' novel is noteworthy in the author's ability to maintain dominantly the perspective of the child. (p. 475)

[In El Camino] the characterizations of the children are psychologically sound. In [this novel], the adult world … forms the backdrop, as the world of childhood moves to center stage. The juxtaposition of the two worlds remains, however, and the reader finds himself judging adult values from the perspective of the child. The result is both a reappraisal of those values and a greater appreciation of the sensitivity of children. (p. 479)